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Summer Visit - 2025 - IMPULS

The summer visit to Caltech is 4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The IMPULS team came to visit in July 2025. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and use math for something that's not just math class.
  • Absolutely we did real astronomy; we were looking at data and analyzing and categorizing things that others may not have done in the past or may have done less hands-on which makes me feel like a real astronomer because we are taking data and giving it purpose that others have not done before!
  • There was not a moment where I was feeling like the work we were doing was useless and the moments where teachers knew the info we got to practice how to teach students which was incredible too. And the fun energy that Luisa entertained/allowed made it just so much more fun and relaxing while still getting great science work done.
  • For me, “real astronomy” was rolling up my sleeves and wrestling with the data. Sitting with the team and Luisa as she walked through the light-curve pipelines, typing in commands, and troubleshooting in real time. That was when I felt like a genuine researcher. It was in the back-and-forth of asking “Why is this flux point off?” and watching her reproduce the exact steps on her screen. That hands-on, collaborative number crunching! The collective “aha!” when a curve suddenly made sense. That's real astronomy.
  • [student:] I really enjoyed getting to know new people and exposing myself to things outside of my comfort zone.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - IMPULS